So far, research and practice has focused on the design and development of service code that is deployed at router startup only, or investigated service creation on demand on packet processors of isolated NPs only. Thus, the potential of router devices with NPs cannot yet be exploited since abstractions and mechanisms for an efficient, flexibly to use service infrastructure are missing.To address these issues, we contribute to research and practice in this dissertation with the proposals of 1.) a novel service model, 2.) a novel node model of router devices, 3.) a novel architecture of a router platform, and 4.) an efficient resource allocation algorithm to map network services onto the router platform.We propose a model of network services composed of data path and control service components with control and data channels between them. It defines the programming model of the router platform and its service infrastructure. The service programming language derived from this model provides the required service programming interface.